Data compiled by the House of Commons Library show that British households' debts are equal to 98 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), more than any of their international peers.

The Government's stock of outstanding debt is also more than 90 per cent of GDP, a threshold some economists consider harmful to economic growth.

The figures, assembled for Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP, show the scale of Britain's debts despite attempts to cut them in the past few years.

Households have been reducing their debts by paying down mortgages and credit card bills, and indebtedness has fallen from more than 100 per cent of GDP in 2010.

But writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Mr Raab says that many households' finances remain worryingly exposed to debt.

"Between 1997 and 2009, household debt as a share of GDP rose by a third," he writes. "It has started to fall back since 2010, but remains at 98 per cent of GDP – leaving many families acutely vulnerable to any increase in interest rates."

The MP also highlights figures showing that government debt is equal to 93.6 per cent of GDP. He says that is above the "notorious tipping point" of 90 per cent of GDP, which Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard University economists, have said smothers economic growth.

Mr Raab says the "fact is that the UK still has a spending problem that is far greater than most of us realise".

The British banking sector also has very large debts by international standards. Banks' outstanding debts are equal to 427 per cent of GDP, more than those in any country except Greece and Japan. Adding together household, government and bank debt, Britain's liabilities are the largest in the EU, Mr Raab says. He added that the figures bolstered the argument made in this newspaper by Boris Johnson, the London mayor, that Britain needed to do much more to address its economic problems.

"The Government's welfare reforms are vital in terms of making work pay," he writes. "Similarly, asking people to work a little longer to provide for longer retirements is common sense. But we also need to incentivise hard work by overhauling marginal rates of taxation and creating the right conditions for start–up companies to expand and thrive."